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ially to see two ladies from America riding into their quiet little village. I suppose

some in that town had never seen more than one other American lady. Mahardeh is a small village of farming people, and they work the land on something of a communal plan. In the plain there are almost countless pits and cisterns dug. The former are storehouses for the grain, and the latter are to store up water for the cattle after the rains have ceased. In digging a new cave, shortly before our visit, they had found an ancient tomb, with stone door in position, but there were no inscriptions.

Our church is a band of very zealous men and women, who are ready to do anything for the cause of Christ. The work in this village started from the seed sown by a colporteur in one of his visits, and it has grown steadily from that beginning, At our communion service the room was crowded, while a large number were unable to enter. The attention was eager and constant. Six persons made a public profession of their faith in Christ, and seven infants were presented for baptism. It was a great joy to see these people and to know their earnestness in the cause of our Master.

After leaving Mahardeh, we had before us a ride of fifty miles to our next point. This distance must be taken in two days, and the night must be spent in a village where we had no acquaintance. The country through which we rode was beautifully varied and fertile, many of the slopes being covered with a good growth of trees, and the lower lands clothed in abundance of ripening grain. At night we stopped in a village lying in the middle of a fertile plain. We were allowed the use of a house which is set aside for the entertainment of strangers. In this we found one room, with not a single window and but one door. We put up a curtain dividing off a portion of the room for the ladies. The fatigue of the long ride The fatigue of the long ride made us sleep well, and we awoke quite refreshed and ready for our next stage. The people of the village were very much interested in all our arrangements, and gathered in large groups to see us eat and to inspect our beds and clothing. Many of the chil

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dren gathered on the roof and looked down on us from that elevation. In the morning, as we were preparing to leave, a company of women stood about the door watching us all, but especially inspecting the ladies. Their surprise seemed to reach its height when one of them said, "See their women! they are clean!" What a story that tells of the habits of the people! Our ride on this second day was even more delightful than on the previous one, for we reached higher ground and had a more extensive view. The valleys were most beautiful, because the line of each water-course was marked with a brilliant fringe of oleanders in full bloom.

In the afternoon we reached a small village named Khareibeh, in which we have a school, but only two church members. Here we tarried a short time to talk with the people who gathered about us. In the centre of the village stands a large tree, whose spreading branches afford a considerable shade. Here we sat for some time before continuing our journey to our stopping place for the night. A hard climb brought us to the top of the last ridge, and then a short descent led to Amar. The village nestles on the slope of the mountain, and our church is one of the most prominent buildings. Here we spent a Sabbath with the people and held several services, all of which were fully attended.

Near to Amar on the same slope is one of the old castles for which this whole coun try is famous. It is a very large one, and is in a better state of preservation than most of the others which I have seen. Many of the old round towers still stand almost unimpaired, while the great moat is almost perfect. Inside of the walls is a dirty, crowded village of considerable size, so that it is not altogether a pleasant place to visit. From here we rode about two hours to Marmorita, where we have a school but no church. Having examined this school, which is a good one, we started the next morning for Habnumera and Safita. I said that our school at Marmorita is a good one, and I meant that it is good in the work it does and in the place it occupies. But I

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wonder whether any of the school teachers who may read this would enjoy such a school-room. It was a plain room in the arched first story of a native house, and was provided with very convenient desks in this manner: each boy on entering the school was obliged to bring a box which is made to hold two five-gallon kerosene oil cans; this box is at once the seat for the boy and the desk for his books. The teacher had a plain pine table and a chair. On one wall was a blackboard. Many of the schools have not even these simple seats.

We planned only a short stop at Habnumera to see the school. As the sky threatened rain, the teacher offered to bring the scholars to us where we were resting in his room. They were marshalled to the place and brought to us in groups for examination. in reading. A number of spectators sat around the room watching the process with evident interest. Evening found us at Safita, a larger place, where we have a good church. Here we stayed two days, and in the evening held a communion service and ordained one of the brethren whom they had chosen as a ruling elder. The brethren entered into the spirit of the occasion, and we felt that they had made a real step of progress.

Our next stage was a long one, and we were in the saddle more than nine hours. We had considerable variety, however, and so were not greatly fatigued. As we crossed the last ridge, we saw the village of Banu resting in its fresh garden among the green fruit trees. The sky was overcast with lowlying clouds, but the village was touched with the bright glow of the setting sun. May this be prophetic of the scattering of all clouds from our little church in the vil lage and the clear shining of the heavenly light upon it!

The last place on our programme was Minyareh. This is a village in which most of the people are quite poor and earn their living as muleteers. We were most cordially received and enjoyed our visit with the brethren exceedingly. On the Sabbath nine

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persons presented themselves for examination as candidates for church membership, and all gave clear testimony of their intelligent acceptance of Christ. Here also the work started without any plan on the part of the missionaries, and was well established before a missionary visited them. On Monday morning the scholars assembled before half past six o'clock, and we examined the classes and started for home before ten o'clock.

It is quite impossible to put on paper the scenes which were passed before us in such a tour, extending over almost three weeks and covering 225 miles, nor to report the many interesting items of the work; but I think it will be seen that there is variety at least connected with our work. In one of the villages which we visited the history of our leading Protestant is very interesting. At first he listened to the reading of the Bible only by stealth, but became interested and purchased a Bible to read for himself. He proclaimed himself a Protestant, and was at once persecuted by parents and brothers, and deserted by his wife. He has since had the joy of seeing that same wife and all those six brothers become Protestants, while his old mother, who still attends the Greek church, says she is a Protestant and that she attends the old church that she may explain the gospel truths to the women in that church. These bright examples are most cheering, and we can only look above for the divine wisdom needed to overcome the varied difficulties in the various stations. At many places there is urgent need for buildings, and it is painful to be obliged to say to the people that we are not yet able to give them the buildings which would so greatly help on the work in their village. Pray for us that we may find the right way through difficulties, and that we may find a way to enter the hundreds of villages which are still closed against us and against the gospel of Christ.

TRIPOLI, SYRIA.

W. S. NELSON.

EMIGRATION FROM SYRIA.

The "emigration fever" shows no signs of abating in these parts. Hundreds go away every month. Zahleh has a population of about eighteen thousand, and during the past eighteen months at least two thousand men have emigrated to English-speak ing countries-to the United States, to Egypt, to Australia and to many of the English colonies. A number have gone to Brazil, but South America does not present the attractions of North America. These two thousand men were mostly young, representing the bone and sinew of the town, and their absence depresses business and affects many interests. Many houses stand vacant, rents have fallen, vineyards lack workers, and the price of all fruits and grain has fallen. On rainy days in winter the once busy markets have a half-deserted appearance.

Mission work has doubtless had much to do with this movement indirectly. The people have naturally concluded that English-speaking lands, which have sent so much money and so many men to Syria, must be highly-favored portions of the earth. They are awake to the fact that progress and prosperity under the present government is well-nigh hopeless. They have learned by comparison that the fight for life here is much more discouraging. Many urge as a last argument, "We cannot get work at any price, and every ten or twelve years we more than repurchase our lands in the taxes we pay to a government that gives nothing in return." So they go away to seek a living and a home elsewhere. I trust that God means to use all these emigrants in furthering the progress of the truth here. Many of them will come back, but never to bow again to the power of the priesthood, never again to live as poorly as they did before. They will have seen Protestant Christianity at its best; and whether they grasp the truth in its fullness and simplicity or not, they will realize that in these Oriental Christian churches there is something fearfully and radically wrong.

The character of these emigrants will

compare most favorably with that of any nationality reaching the American shores. They are not drunkards, they are not turbulent, they do not carry revolutionary theories or propensities. They come from very frugal homes, where ties of parental affection and kinship are very strong; their ideas of marriage and of parental authority are biblical and pure; they are all firm believers in God and providence, and they are very correct in all their beliefs excepting those which refer to the Church in this world. They come from a land that wears a heavy double yoke-the yoke of a foreign Mohammedan government and the yoke of a densely-ignorant and worldly priesthood. In fairness to the work of missions here, it must be said that not more than one in twenty is a Protestant, and that not one of all the number represents any church or society or organized Christian work. If people give special help or gifts of money, they should at least recog nize that they give to individuals only, and not to any board or church work. Christians of America can do God good service if they will discourage peddling of relics and curiosities, most of which are made in France, and help these Syrians to find honest work in stores and factories and trades. All the trades and handiwork of Syria is of the rudest possible description, and the country will be blessed by every skilled workman that comes into it; but it will not be blessed by the return of those who have bartered truth aud conscience for unhallowed gains, who first went and sold "goods from the Holy Land." But that work has ended, and unless these late emigrants enter into the honest competition of hand and brain, they will most certainly be drafted into the ranks of Satan's army, who will no doubt find abundant work for them to do.

It is estimated by those best fitted to judge in such matters that from twenty to twentyfive thousand people have left Syria within the past two years. Nearly all of these are from native nominal Christian sects, since

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Moslems cannot leave until exempt from military service, which does not occur until a man is nearly fifty years old. These twenty thousand people have not returned a fifth of the money they carried away with them. The wheat that they would have eaten lies unsold, their fields and vineyards lie uncultivated, and those who remain are forced to bear the whole amount of taxes levied by the Turkish government. The custom of the government is to fix the number of males in any one village and require from the sheikh head man so much tax per capita. There are villages where the number of men has fallen to two thirds or one half of the fixed number, and this remnant, large or small, is still liable for the whole amount of taxes. But the government has gone further than this. years past, when money was greatly needed, tax collectors came and offered heavy discounts to all who would pay two or three or five years in advance. Recently the government has repudiated this action, and is now collecting these discounts, extending back over eight or ten years. It

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amounts in some cases to a repurchase of the property.

All such things affect us not as simple political news, but as very active and potent hindrances to the gospel. People are so pressed in the unequal strife that they cannot or will not give time to anything else. The Sabbath is broken by labors which they claim they cannot escape from. If six men agree to harvest their grain in a certain part of the plain during the coming week, and in so doing work on two Sabbaths, the seventh man must work with them even under protest; for the moment the six men are through, they drive their cattle into the stubble, and if the seventh man's grain is still standing, he will lose half his year's toil in a single night. Moslems of course have no Sabbath, neither have the Druses, and the members of the Oriental churches. are excused after early mass. Indeed, they are taught that a special blessing will attend their labors if they will plough and reap on the Sabbath the portions assigned to the priests and the poor. F. E. HOSKINS.

ZAHLEH, SYRIA.

SYRIAN SUPERSTITIONS.

Superstition, that horrid incubus which dwelt in darkness,. is passing away, without return. Religion cannot pass away. The burning of a little straw may hide the stars of the sky, but the stars are there and will reappear.-Carlyle,

The popular superstitions of a country are the current literature of its unlettered classes an unwritten code of etiquette, business, medicine and religion. And although it would be much more satisfactory to treat so extensive a theme in a series of articles, rather than in one short paper, my present purpose is to give a glimpse of the subject that may at least indicate what sort of precepts and beliefs have supplanted those of Scripture in these Bible lands, and how really these nominally Christian sects need Christianizing. It is of course to be borne in mind that many superstitions are local, and also that the civilizing and Christianizing influences of the last sixty years

have done much toward banishing and consigning to oblivion these pseudo-laws.

Goethe's apothegm, "Superstition is the poetry of life," finds its confirmation in some of the superstitions that are quite pleasing. For instance, on New Year's morning the peasant women carry to the fountain a sample of their various stores and sprinkle the same upon the water, saying, "Good-morning, O fountain; may our stores be as perennial and overflowing as your waters." The Moslems have a belief that each day the Lord sends upon mankind seventy afflictive strokes, of which sixty-nine fall upon believers and one upon unbelievers. Some, again, are decidedly useful-as the belief that too much noise and crying at a deathbed will hinder the soul's exit and displease the angels waiting to carry it away. Also that a gun is Satan's tool, not to be trifled with, though unloaded, as Satan dwells in

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it, and no one can tell what mischief it may do, though empty. They quaintly say that a loaded gun terrifies but one person, while an empty one terrifies two: the enemy, who does not suppose it empty, and the bearer, who is at his foe's mercy because it is empty. But the superstition that carries off the palm, in my estimation, is that which alleges that he who pleases an infant and makes it laugh has a title to a special paradise, wholly reserved for such, and that every hair which a father allows his infant to pluck from his beard will atone for one of his leading sins.

A much larger number of superstitions, however, are quite inconvenient: as, that a woman who desires a prosperous silkworm crop must first swallow a chrysalis; and if a jar or pitcher falls to the ground without breaking, it is because of an evil influence and it must therefore be deliberately broken. When welcome guests first leave, the door may not be closed nor the house swept, as such an act would interfere with their coming again.

And the inconvenience becomes positive mischief in many cases, even aside from the evil, mental, moral and spiritual, inherent in all superstition. If two persons are sick at the same time, he who first recovers may on no account visit him who is still sick. In planting the yearly crop of beans, he who would secure a good yield must, before setting out, give his wife a beating as full as his hopes. The standard cure for insanity is to beat the victim about the head with an old shoe. Because insanity is still looked upon as a satanic possession, the remedy is applied in a church by the priest, and the beating is kept up until the poor wretch shall give some signs of returning sanity. If the priest exhausts himself without success, it proves that the affliction is a disease, not a possession.

This introduces us to the most prolific and persistent of all the families of superstition, the medical family. King Asa forgot his God and resorted to the physicians, thus losing the favor of God. These poor people, forgetting God and having no respectable physicians to resort to, and but little money to expend upon physic, have taken refuge

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in superstition and have thus lost the favor of God.

A common remedy for a confirmed invalid is to await a funeral and bury with the corpse a string the exact length of the invalid, whose disease is thus buried with the string. Warts are supposed to be produced by pointing at the moon or stars, and are cured (?) after this fashion: the afflicted person hands a friend a twig and then puts his finger on one of his own warts. The friend then says, "Shall I cut it off?" "Yes," is the reply. Whereupon he cuts a nick in the twig, and the operation is repeated for each wart. The twig is then buried in the earth, and as it decays the warts are supposed to disappear at the same

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The tertian fever is greatly dreaded, and its remedies are accordingly heroic. One is for the victim to go to the cemetery (where are always heaps of human bones exposed) and bring thence a bone, carrying it all the way in his teeth, observing at all hazards perfect silence till he reaches home. Another variety of the prescription bids the invalid go at the close of the day to the cemetery and say, "Good-evening, ye who never say 'good-evening.' Lend me a pillow; your guest has come to visit me." Then he must carry home a stone and use it that night for a pillow. In the morning he will return it to the cemetery and say, "Good-morning, ye who never say goodmorning.'

Take your pillow; your guest has left." He will then recover. A more æsthetic remedy is for the invalid to take a dish in each hand and visit seven Marys, each of whom will give him a little flour and a little oil in each. He will then make a lump of the dough and fill it with oil and light it, placing it at some road-crossing. Any person putting out the light or any animal eating the dough will contract the disease and relieve the invalid.

Of all the medical superstitions, no branch is so numerous as that relating to offspring. The eagerness for offspring so touchingly shown in the case of Hannah has an intensity in the East quite unknown in the West. The chief remedy for the great disgrace of

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